Malian Army

The Malian Army is the ground force of the Malian military, consisting of 7,350 troops. The Malian military was founded on 10 October 1960 after Mali was granted its independence from France, and it mostly used weapons imported from France, the Soviet Union, China, and Bulgaria, as they were cheap yet reliable. Starting in 2012, the Malian army had to combat insurgencies by Ansar Dine, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.